XP vs ME Boot disks

[Biggie]

Hi,

I recently purchased a 160GB HD and last night I formatted it with a ME boot disk and it shows up as 131GB. I was wondering if there is some cap or limit on the size a HD can be with the ME boot disk?


thanks in advance.

[TravisS]

I think there is a cap to FAT32 partition sizes, but I can't remember what exactly it is.

Anyway, I'd highly reccomend you split that drive into at least 2 partitions anyway. You could have, essentially, 2 80 GB drives. Probably an even better thing to do would be make one a 120 GB drive and the other a 40 GB drive.

Use the smaller partition for Windows, programs, etc... but store all of your personal files on the 120 GB partition. That way if for some reason Windows get's corrupt and you can't save it, you will only have to format the 40 GB partition and all your files on the 120 GB partition will be OK

[FloatingPoint]

Most of what you might need to know, summed up here in nice neat tables.

[Boomba]

Use the smaller partition for Windows, programs, etc... but store all of your personal files on the 120 GB partition. That way if for some reason Windows get's corrupt and you can't save it, you will only have to format the 40 GB partition and all your files on the 120 GB partition will be OK

I second that suggestion! ..I recently lost a lot of stuff after my XP didnt start because I didnt use seperate partitions..had to reformat everything including school work and programming projects. I definitly have two partitions now

[XSquared]

I have a partition for Windows, another one for my apps, and another one for all of my data, and another one for anything else.

[golfinguy4]

Also, it could be an advertisement thing. 1 gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. However, advertisers use giga bytes which are really 1000 mega bytes. When there is a space in between the prefix and byte, there is really only 1000 actual bytes of the type, not 1024 as standard computers use. Hence, you lose space, but how much depends on how big the drive is.

[frenchfry164]

I call this "The Lost Bytes of the Holy Crusade of Hard Drive Space"

You really notice this on big harddrives, like yours. Sometimes a hard drive varies from what the box says, from manufacturing problems as well. Some dude I know bought a 40GB HD and ended up having 42 GB instead! My 40GB drive can hold 37.8 GB altogether.

[FloatingPoint]

Originally posted by Boomba
I second that suggestion! ..I recently lost a lot of stuff after my XP didnt start because I didnt use seperate partitions..had to reformat everything including school work and programming projects. I definitly have two partitions now

You could of used a program like FinalData to get deleted data off disks which have been formatted.

[Xei]

It sounds like the format used very large sector sizes. You should use NTFS for drives that large, and why use ME!

And yea, partition it for sure.

My 120GB is partitioned into:

5GB Windows XP
10GB Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
5GB Temporary Drive (keeps me from cluttering my desktop)
10 GB Programming Partition.
The rest is dedicated to applications and games.

Then I have an 80GB and I havent partitioned it yet. (Mainly used as DVD ripping for the moment)